Archives for July 2009

It’s a good thing for Susan Hutchison that she’s expected to breeze through the August primary into the general election for King County Executive, for as Richard Pope reveals in the comment threads, it looks like she probably couldn’t count on herself to deliver a crucial vote:

Someone should make an issue of Susan Hutchison’s voting record. Susan S. Hutchison (DOB: 03/24/1954) failed to vote in the August or September primary elections in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007. […] She didn’t vote in the presidential primaries in 2000 and 2008 either…

Eh… who bothers to vote in odd-year primaries anyway, what with only those peripheral local races on the ballot?

UPDATE:
Richard points out that the other four county executive candidates all have perfect general and primary voting records from 2000 through 2008.

Future Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in 1989 on the completion of the I-90 floating bridge:

”It’s a dinosaur,” Greg Nickels, a member of the King County Council, the governing body that covers the Seattle metropolitan area. He said the transportation solutions of the next century would include light rail systems and car pools.

Twenty years later, light rail is about to open, and soon to be extended across that very same bridge.

You can read Mayor Nickels in his own words, about the significance of tomorrow’s milestone, in a guest post over at Seattle Transit Blog.

As painful as it may be to write, I once again agree with the Seattle Times in their efforts to have court documents unsealed from Susan Hutchison’s discrimination suit against KIRO TV:

Hutchison, through her lawyer, says she supports open records but not when it comes to intruding into the privacy of an individual who availed themselves of the court. That sounds too much like she supports open records — just not her records.

That’s called hypocrisy, especially coming from someone who claims to have been a journalist. (Though in all fairness to Hutchison, it’s hard to call reading words off a teleprompter “journalism.”)

Court records and proceedings are generally public by default, both as a First Amendment right, and as a matter of judicial principle, as public oversight of the courts is our primary safeguard in ensuring that justice is meted out fairly. Indeed, such openness is fundamental to our entire system of justice. Think about it: secret courts equal tyranny and oppression.

That’s why court records are normally only sealed under certain circumstances, such as closed adoptions, juveniles (criminals and victims), witness protection, trade secrets and national security. Personal privacy is generally not one of these circumstances, apart from obvious things like social security numbers. Choose to bring a civil suit and you choose to make the information disclosed by both parties public. That’s the way the system works, and that’s likely the second most common reason, after cost, that parties choose to settle disputes privately, before their dirty laundry is aired out in court.

Hutchison was an aging female newscaster demoted from her weeknight anchor job in favor of a younger (and less expensive) woman. Right or wrong, that’s not uncommon in the cutthroat TV news biz. Still, she probably could have secured a modest severance settlement out of KIRO TV, simply by threatening a discrimination suit. That too is common in the biz. But whatever KIRO TV offered apparently wasn’t good enough for Hutchison, so she exercised her right to sue in civil court.

Hutchison and her surrogates claim that KIRO TV’s willingness to settle proves her discrimination claims, but with the records sealed and the terms of the settlement secret, such assertions are totally unsupported. Perhaps little or no money changed hands. For all we know, Hutchison ended up paying KIRO.

What we do know is that Hutchison failed to win her old job back, and she failed to secure a comparable anchor position at any of the three competing stations, so while age and gender no doubt played a role in her demotion, it was a cold, cruel business decision based on ratings and performance more than anything else. I mean, not every female newscaster is shoved aside once their youth fades; for example, Jean Enersen’s reporting and interviewing chops have earned her a steady hold on the KING-5 anchor chair since 1972.

The Times warns that Hutchison risks “squandering credibility by fighting this case,” but really, how much credibility did she have to start with? As a newscaster, certainly not as much credibility as Enersen. And as a political candidate for executive office with little or no political or executive experience at all… well… um…?

Perhaps we’ll be able to answer that question better once the court documents are unsealed.

Pat Buchanan mixes in a little ignorance to his outright bigotry [emphasis mine]:

When asked why the overwhelming majority of justices have been white, Buchanan declined to explicitly cite discrimination, but explained that “White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks, who were 90% of the nation in 1960 when I was growing up and the other 10% were African-Americans who had been discriminated against. That’s why.”

I think Buchanan needs to brush up on his Civil War knowledge:

In May and June of 1863, 1600 Black troops fighting and dying under the official label of United States Colored Troops (USCT) at Milliken’s Bend, across the Mississippi River northwest of Vicksburg, made General Ulysses Grant’s Siege of Vicksburg a success and brought that “Gibraltar of the Confederacy” crashing to the ground on July 4, 1863.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paeuC-i8E1o&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I grew up about a half-mile from Cynwyd Station, and as kids, my friends and I found the train to center city Philadelphia much more convenient than relying on our parents to cart us around to movie theaters, sporting good stores, and other attractions. But it wasn’t just those of us with youthful vigor who frequently hoofed our way to the rail stop, for every morning as I prepared to walk to school, I’d see a stream of business suit clad men lugging their briefcases down the street in the other direction, some of whom routinely walked to the station from more than a mile away.

These weren’t granola crunching tree-hugging hippies. These were doctors, lawyers, businessmen and other professionals who, weather and circumstances permitting, left their cars at home in the driveway most days, not because it was the right thing to do, or the less expensive thing to do, but because it was the obvious and natural thing to do. Why battle traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway each morning when the train was a 10 minute walk away?

The commuter suburb of my youth grew up around the station, not by accident, but by design. Built in 1886, this short spur of the Pennsylvania Railroad was as much a real estate development project as it was a transit line, and that rail-centric ethos survived at least a century, before SEPTA budget woes resulted in drastically reduced schedules. The point is, people didn’t take the train because they had to, but because they wanted to, and with parking always limited at the station, many were happy to walk a mile or more for the convenience.

So when I continue to read news reports about complaints over the lack of free parking around most stations on Seattle’s soon to be opened Link Light Rail, I can’t help but shrug my shoulders. Build it, and they will walk. And if the folks who live there now aren’t willing to hoof it, over time these neighborhoods will attract new residents who will.

Which gets me thinking about my own relationship to the Seattle light rail system I’ve so passionately advocated, and how far I’m willing to walk to use it. I’ve half-jokingly complained for years about the elimination of the Graham Street station from the final plan, which would have been a mere 10-15 minute walk from house, quite possibly close enough to bump up my property value. I’ve also wistfully talked about moving into Columbia City to be walking distance both to its business district and its light rail station. But I’d never actually measured the distances myself.

As it turns out, the little map app on my iPhone says that Othello station is about a mile away, only a quarter mile further by foot than the corner of MLK Jr. & Graham, so my dog and I decided to walk it today for ourselves. At a comfortably brisk pace we clocked 18-minutes there, and 20-minutes back (climbing the hill from Rainier Ave. on the way home), and we could probably have made it a little faster but for the need to obsessively mark the path with urine, and briefly stop to pick thistle from our paws.

So, will I walk to light rail?

Well, at least for the moment, I don’t commute, so it’s kinda a moot point in the context of this discussion, but if I were a commuter, and the rail line took me reasonably close to my workplace, yeah, I’d be willing to walk a mile in each direction, weather and circumstances permitting. If it was really hot or really cold or raining very hard, I don’t know that I’d be up for that hike, and if my afterwork plans took me inconveniently off-route, I’d probably take my car. But some days—perhaps most days—I find it a reasonable distance to walk.

Of course, if my circumstances were different, a daily walk to and from the train station would be more of a no-brainer. Before our divorce, we were a one-car family, and the opportunity to save the expense of buying and insuring a second car (let alone fueling and parking it) would make a walk+rail commute all the more attractive. But as a single father, going carless in Seattle isn’t as much of an option, and thus the cost savings of commuting by rail aren’t nearly as great.

As for my recreational use of light rail, the 2-hour parking restriction presents much less of a problem, as it’s only enforced 7AM to 6PM, Mondays through Friday, leaving the spots open nights and weekends for casual hide & riders like me. Meeting folks for drinks or dinner downtown? You can freely park your car near the station starting at 4PM, and make it downtown in plenty of time for happy hour. As a moderate drinker (even when Drinking Liberally), I’d likely choose that option over hiking it home late at night.

Opponents of light rail have long criticized it as social engineering, and to some extent they’re right. Like the commuter lines of the old Pennsylvania Railroad, the South Seattle segment is proving as much a real estate development project as it is a transit line, as evidenced by the massive residential redevelopment going on along MLK Jr. Way. Mixed income houses, townhouses, apartments and condos are being built for folks who want the convenience and economy of living a reasonable walking distance to a light rail station, and as these developments expand further out from the stations, so will the notion of what a reasonable walking distance is.

If anything, these quarter-mile restricted parking zones are too small, and neighborhoods will likely clamor for their extension when hide & riders cluster along the border. And after a while, the notion of healthily walking a couple miles a day to and from work, rather than driving to and from the fitness club for your daily workout, will become as commonplace around here as it was in the commuter-rail suburb of my youth.

And the best thing is, if you don’t want to be part of this new, socially engineered, walk & ride culture, there will always be plenty of Seattle neighborhoods without it.

That’s right, I support the Seattle Times… in their efforts to unseal court records from Susan Hutchison’s discrimination suit against KIRO TV.

The Seattle Times contends that of 859 pages filed with the court in the lawsuit, 753 are sealed improperly.

Hutchison’s attorney says that the King County Executive candidate supports open records, except, you know, when it comes to herself. For their part, KIRO TV apparently has nothing to hide, their lawyer telling the Times that “the court should unseal the files and has all authority to do that.”

So what’s Hutchison trying to hide?

I’ve been told that much of Hutchison’s suit was based on her claims that she was demoted to noon anchor because she was white, while KIRO responded with details of her abusive, insubordinate and unprofessional behavior on and off the set. Of course, the court records are sealed, so I don’t know if any of that is true. They’re just rumors. But if these rumors aren’t true, and the court records don’t support them, you’d think Hutchison might want clear the record by having it unsealed.

I’m just sayin’….

More people are starting to notice that we’ve had a very big problem in our City Attorney’s office [emphasis in the original]:

The executive committee had recommended a sole endorsement of incumbent City Attorney Tom Carr. But a delegate from the stagehands’ union reportedly stood up, and said that Carr’s involvement in Operation Sobering Thought, a bar and nightclub sting, “really hurt our members and he was too punitive,” said one of the delegates, on the condition of anonymity. Several delegates spoke against Carr, according to another man exiting onto the street, who said, “They think Carr could have been more fiscally responsible” and “he has cost the city a lot of money for his decisions.” The man added, “In the past, delegates spoke up for Carr, but they didn’t like what he has done his last years in office.” Several other members spoke in favor of Carr’s challenger Pete Holmes. Carr didn’t get a sufficient number of votes for an endorsement; in fact, Carr’s was the only executive recommendation that the group didn’t ratify. The executive committee may recommend dual endorsement—or a sole endorsement of Holmes—after the primary election.

Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey stopped by Drinking Liberally last night, and I immediately groused about how a dearth of irritating editorials in recent weeks has reduced me to dumpster diving over at Crosscut. Ramsey explained that he’d just returned from vacation, and that my complaint would be remedied in the morning with an editorial he penned on trade.

He didn’t disappoint: “Anti-trade bill that would hurt Washington state trade jobs should be stopped.”

At the risk of destroying his credibility with his co-workers, I have to admit that Ramsey is my favorite Times editorial writer (though as I explained to him last night, “it’s a pretty low bar”), largely because I find his columns both readable and consistent. The latter quality I attribute to his passionate libertarianism, a passion clearly on display in today’s editorial:

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act makes private commerce subject to the moral imperialism of advocates who do not conduct trade and don’t care about it.

Under the bill, if a foreign trading partner’s government doesn’t have “adequate labor and environmental regulations” — the adequacy determined by busybodies — the trade can be stopped.

If the foreign government hasn’t “taken effective steps to combat and prevent private and public corruption” — the effectiveness defined by busybodies — the trade can be stopped.

If the foreign government doesn’t have “transparency” and “due process of law” to suit American tastes, the trade can be stopped.

Uh-huh. Passion… check. Consistency… check. Facts… not so much.

Putting aside his efforts to dismiss those of us who care about human rights and environmental protection as mere “busybodies” (you know, “busybodies” like the Pope), Ramsey’s passionate hyperbole substantially misrepresents a bill that doesn’t actually include the authority to “stop” anything. Rather, the stated purpose of the TRADE Act is to review existing trade agreements, draw up standards on which to base future agreements and renegotiations, and provide greater Congressional oversight of the process, its main provisions consisting of:

• Require a comprehensive review of existing trade agreements with an emphasis on economic results, enforcement and compliance and an analysis of non-tariff provisions in trade agreements.
• Spell out standards for labor and environmental protections, food and product safety, national security exceptions and remedies that must be included in new trade pacts.
• Set requirements regarding public services, farm policy, investment, government procurement and affordable medicines and compare them with components of current trade agreements.
• Require the president to submit renegotiation plans for current trade pacts prior to negotiating new agreements and prior to congressional consideration of pending agreements.
• Create a committee made up of the chairs and ranking members of each committee whose jurisdiction is affected by trade agreements to review the president’s plan for renegotiations.
• Restore congressional oversight of trade agreements.

All existing trade treaties remain in force, and this bill provides no authority to modify or “stop” them. As for future agreements, the language within the bill is far from anti-trade or heavy handed, for example, Section 4, Subsection D:

(D) provide that failures to meet the labor standards required by the trade agreement shall be subject to effective dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms and penalties that are included in the core text of the trade agreement…

In truth, the “busybodies” Ramsey refers to are members of Congress, and even if they were to determine that a particular trading partner was, say, violating fundamental human rights (defined in the act as “the rights enumerated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights”), they still wouldn’t have the power to unilaterally “stop” the trade as Ramsey implies. Rather, under future treaties, our government’s recourse would be to pursue “effective dispute resolution.”

Hardly a draconian, anti-trade provision.

Ramsey is right that Washington is perhaps the most trade dependent state in the nation, which makes trade a sensitive subject for members of both parties. And if anybody doubts the extent to which “free traders” like Ramsey control the debate in this state, look no further than the fact that none of our state’s House delegation are among the 110 U.S. representatives who co-sponsored the TRADE Act… not even typically reliable progressives like Jim McDermott and Jay Inslee.

But Ramsey does a disservice to our state and to his readers when he reduces a 44-page bill into a 229-word, knee-jerk screed against trade restrictions of any kind:

The idea behind this bill is that commerce is bad and is making workers in America poor. Tell that to workers assembling aircraft, writing software, or moving containers on the docks.

Yeah, well, tell that to the tens of thousands of Washington workers who have seen their jobs shipped overseas to low-wage nations with lax environmental, workplace and product safety standards, and often no right to organize at all.

I appreciate that Ramsey’s objections to this bill are consistent with his steadfast libertarianism; in fact, I almost respect it. But rather than foster informed public debate on this issue, his intent appears to be to quash it, and I expect better than that from my favorite Seattle Times editorial board member.

The only convincing thing one can say about yesterday’s KING5/SurveyUSA poll of the King County Executive race is that the top line is statistically unchanged from the one three weeks ago. Susan Hutchison drops a couple points, Larry Phillips rises one, while Dow Constantine and Ross Hunter remain steady. If there’s any motion, it’s from Fred Jarrett climbing from 4% to 7%, but even that might fairly be categorized as noise.

It’s hard to predict anything from these numbers except that Hutchison will make it through to the November election, but if I were Constantine’s folks I suppose I’d be somewhat buoyed, although Phillips does appear to be closing the gap with liberal voters.

Oddly enough, Hutchison continues to poll surprisingly well with liberal voters, relative to the other members of the field, which suggests that many voters just don’t know her very well yet. No surprise there, and something the Democratic nominee will ultimately have to work hard to correct, considering that word in the street is that the usual Republican suspects plan to spend $1 million on Hutchison’s behalf in the general.

Here’s hoping the usual Democratic suspects don’t get complacent.

UPDATE:
And speaking of the usual Democratic suspects, Constantine just beat out Phillips for the highly prized SEIU endorsement.

Earlier today, Goldy discussed the race for Seattle City Attorney and incumbent Tom Carr’s attempts to misrepresent his opponent’s qualifications for the office. Pete Holmes initially became Carr’s opponent in this race after he became so infuriated by his attempts to deal with him from his position as the attorney on the citizen’s police oversight board that he decided to challenge him. Here’s the latest polling on the race:

The results show a nearly 3:1 lead for Tom Carr, but 70% of the electorate remains undecided. Women and voters 35-49 both have an undecided count over 70%. It’s over 80% for Republicans. Of decided voters, Carr still maintains a margin of nearly 4:1 amongst respondents 50-64 and over 4:1 with those 65 and older.

The vast majority of voters just aren’t paying attention to this race. But they should be. Tom Carr has been the City Attorney for Seattle for the past eight years and has repeatedly shown himself to be overzealous in pursuit of nanny state crusades and completely out of touch with the voters of the city. Dominic Holden recently provided a recap of his horrendous track record:

– Tom Carr fought against I-75, the initiative to make marijuana law enforcement the lowest priority of Seattle Police.

– Since the passage of I-75, Carr has actually prosecuted a higher percentage of the pot cases referred to his office.

– After a citywide sweep called Operation Sobering Thought, Carr tried to send 27 bar employees to jail for up to a year for various offenses such as serving minors (none of them were successfully prosecuted).

– Carr used city resources to unsuccessfully appeal – all the way up to federal court – a free speech case against a balloon artist who claimed he didn’t need a permit to do his thing at Seattle Center, and has threatened to waste even more money appealing it to the Supreme Court.

– He aggressively impounded the cars of people with unpaid parking tickets until the state Supreme Court ruled that he was breaking the law. The fiasco later cost the city $1.3 million in a class-action lawsuit.

– He once briefly attempted to threaten several Seattle Times reporters with jail time if they didn’t reveal their confidential sources.

As Dominic mentioned, the office of City Attorney in most other places is not an elected official. While it feels nice to have direct influence over the person who does this job, what tends to happen instead is that political creatures like Carr can hold onto an office because voters tend to have too little bandwidth to follow these smaller races. But this one’s too important for that now, and Seattle really can’t afford another four years of this.

Join us tonight at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

Tonight’s crowd will, no doubt, be filled with wisdom and empathy.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KDExqKZBIU[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 332 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to get lost at.

That’s what Eli Sanders is reporting over at Slog, and if true it would be very good news indeed.

Cantwell’s apparent opposition to a public option was always a bit puzzling, which made her low hanging fruit for organizations and activists looking to move a few crucial senators from nay to yea. All those constituents who made phone calls, sent emails, showed up at rallies and otherwise kept the pressure on Cantwell deserve a ton of credit for their effective grassroots activism.

As Erica reported yesterday over at Publicola, the whisper campaign regarding Seattle City Attorney candidate Pete Holmes is no longer a whisper, with both incumbent Tom Carr and his campaign manager Cindi Laws now publicly and repeatedly challenging Holmes’ eligibility for the office.

Today, Carr reiterated that view. “The charter provision says that you have to be both active [with the bar] and engaged in the practice of law in Seattle,” Carr said this morning. “He has not been practicing law—taking on clients, giving advice, doing the things that lawyers do.”

Well, here is what the City Charter says about the qualifications for the office of City Attorney:

The City Attorney shall be an attorney of the Supreme Court of the State, and have been in the practice of his or her profession in The City of Seattle for at least four years next prior to his or her election.

And here is what the Washington State Bar Association says about Holmes’ status as an active attorney:

Clearly, Holmes has been an “attorney of the Supreme Court of the State” since 1986 (five years longer than Carr, by the way), so that part of the requirement seems beyond dispute. As for the requirement that the City Attorney have been in the practice of law in Seattle for at least four years prior to the election, here’s what Holmes told me via email:

My Washington bar license has always been on “active” status. After 16 years in the private sector, City Council appointed me as the lawyer member of the OPA Review Board in 2002 (which expressly requires a WSBA member in good standing), where I practiced my profession in public service until the last quarter of 2008. I’ve been in private practice at Crocker Kuno PLLC since the first quarter of 2009. I was fully authorized to practice law during my OPARB tenure; I just didn’t accept private, fee-paying clients—and presumably Carr hasn’t either since 2002.

Now, I’m no attorney (much to my mother’s chagrin), but I don’t read anything in the City Charter that says anything about taking on private clients. If Holmes has been an active member of the Bar, and such membership was a requirement of his appointment to the OPA Review Board, then that sure sounds like practicing law to me, for why require an active attorney if not to benefit from his legal advice? And how, in this sense, is Holmes legal service to the city really any different from Carr’s legal service, except by volume?

But all this niggling, legalist nitpicking is really beside the point, for if Carr truly believed that Holmes was technically ineligible to run for the office of City Attorney, the appropriate course of action would have been not a whisper campaign, but rather a legal challenge to his eligibility under RCW 29A.68.011, alleging that Holmes’ name “is about to be wrongfully placed upon the ballots,” and to be filed in King County Superior Court “no later than the second Friday following the closing of the filing period for nominations for such office“… a deadline long since passed.

I mean, Carr is the sitting City Attorney for chrisakes. I assume he knows this stuff.

No, instead Carr and Laws appear to be raising questions about Holmes’ technical qualifications merely as an underhanded means of raising questions about Holmes’ professional qualifications for the office. “Hey look… this guy is such a crappy lawyer he doesn’t understand the law enough to realize he isn’t even eligible to run for the office!” That seems to be the message coming out of the Carr campaign.

What this sort of cynical, political maneuvering says about Carr’s own professionalism, I’ll leave up to you.